The stories behind the buildings, statues and other points of interest that make Manhattan fascinating.

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

B'nai Jeshurun -- No. 257 West 88th Street

In the first years of the 19th century
Congregation Sherarith Israel, founded by the Spanish and Portuguese Jews who
arrived in New Amsterdam in September 1654, was New York’s only place of Jewish
worship.When German and Polish
immigrants attempted to hold separate services following their native minhag, or rites, they were
rebuffed.In response, a group split
off, forming B’nai Jeshurun in 1825.

The congregation’s first synagogue was obtained in 1827 when
it purchased the building of the First Colored Presbyterian Church.It would move three more times before buying
land on the Upper West Side in 1917.Each of the former shuls had been architecturally impressive; but this
one, on West 88th Street between Broadway and West End Avenue, would
be nearly unique.

The trustees’ search for an architect went no further than
its own congregation.Henry B. Herts and
his partner, Walter S. Schneider, were both B’nai
Jeshurun members. In seeking to create a
style they termed of “Semitic character,” they studied architectural fragments in
an effort to establish historically and culturally accurate connections to early
Jewish structures.

Ground was broken in 1917 and construction completed the
following year.Scheider & Herts had
produced a leviathan edifice which melded Moorish and Middle Eastern elements.The mostly-stark façade of variegated,
weathered granite blocks provided the backdrop for the dramatic arched portal.Within the soaring arch was a large rose
window, containing a Star of David.On
either side of the broad copper parapet thickset copper-clad towers rose.

Congregation B’nai Jeshurun was only unafraid to deal
with hot topic issues—like Zionism, Nazism and anti-Semitic discrimination—and its
leaders aggressively encouraged debate.On November 22, 1922, for instance, former Ambassador to Germany, James
W. Gerard, addressed the congregation about the Ku Klux Klan.He cautioned Jews not to “wage war” on the Klan.

“It would simply increase the very racial and religious
antipathies which the Klan seeks to stir up.It is for us [the government] to attend to the Klansmen, and we shall do
it.Leave them to us.”

Nearly a decade before Adolph Hitler would come to power in
Germany, Rabbi Israel Goldstein recognized the freedom American Jews enjoyed
over their European counterparts.On
December 25, 1925 he told a group of Jewish college students that they were “more
fortunate than their European coreligionists in being able to study in a
tolerant atmosphere…In American colleges, the shadow of discrimination may not
be altogether missing, but if there be a lurking prejudice against the Jewish
student it is covert and not overt.”

Of the hundreds of funerals held here, one of the most
visible was that of shoe dealer and importer Israel Miller on August 21,
1929.A Polish cobbler, Miller had
arrived in New York City in 1892 at the age of 19.His inventive designs caught the eye of
theatrical producers and performers and within just three years the I. Miller
shoe business was a success.By the
time of his death, I. Miller shoes had a string of stores in Manhattan and
Brooklyn, including its Times Square building adorned with full length marble statues
of actresses.

Newspapers reported that more than 2,000 mourners attended
Miller’s funeral and hundreds more, unable to get into the synagogue, crowded
the streets.

The anti-Semitic discrimination in Europe which Rabbi
Goldstein had mentioned nearly a decade earlier was brutally evident in 1933 following
Hitler’s becoming Chancellor of Germany.On November 30 Charles H. Sherrill, former Ambassador to Turkey, addressed
the congregation regarding the proposed ban of the Berlin Olympics.

Like James Gerard had done, he cautioned against stirring up
trouble.The New York Times reported “Although
the treatment of Jews in Germany was ‘outrageous and hideous,’ General Sherrill
said, a boycott against the Olympic Games there would be a worse thing.”He suggested that the backlash might even be
felt at home.“It would provide an ‘anti-Semitic
feeling’ in the United States,” reported the newspaper.

After the United Nations voted to establish a Jewish state
in Palestine, a service “of prayerful thanks for the Jewish state” was held in
B’nai Jeshurun on December 6, 1947.The speakers reflected immense optimism,
blissfully unaware of the decades of turmoil to come.

Moshe Shertok, director of the political department of the
Jewish Agency for Palestine, told the congregation that the Arab masses “want
to live in peace with the Jewish people because they know that a Jewish state
will bring great benefits to the Arabs.”

Rabbi Israel Goldstein was a bit more realistic.“We are fully mindful of the difficulties
which still lie in the path and of the gap between the formal decision and the
actual fact.But we face the future with
faith.”

B’nai Jeshurun’s tradition of political and social
involvement was evidence in 1978 when it staged a series of lectures entitled “Dialogue
’78.”Among the speakers were Rabbi
Irving Greenberg, described as a “Jewish thinker and spiritual guide” who spoke
on the Holocaust; Shimon Peres who would go on to become Israeli President and
Prime Minister; and Emil Fackenheim, “one of the world’s leading philosophers.”

photograph by Jono David from bj.org

In May 1991 the imposing synagogue was threatened when the
roof collapsed, burying part of the sanctuary under a half ton of debris.A five-year restoration and renovation
resulted in a modernized, multiple-use space.

2 comments:

Another fascinating history. I wonder how this building relates, is compared to, or contrasted from the Park Avenue Synagogue, which has a similar architectural history. http://steeber.deviantart.com/art/Park-Avenue-Synagogue-293766402

The similarities in the design are not coincidental. The Park Avenue building was completed nearly a decade later, in 1927, and was designed by Walter S. Schneider, after breaking ties with Henry Herts.